Sixty-five years after
the death of its founding father, Pakistanis are still searching for
Mohammed Ali Jinnah's vision for the country - and a missing historical
speech.

During much of its existence, Pakistanis have been encouraged
to believe that Mr Jinnah created Pakistan in the name of Islam as a
theocratic state.

Others have disagreed, arguing the founding father wanted a Muslim-majority but secular and progressive country.

The debate over the two competing and contradictory visions
has intensified in recent years as the country reels from growing
Islamic extremism and Taliban militancy.

At the heart of this debate are some public addresses of Mr Jinnah given around the time of the partition of India in 1947.

Transcripts of those addresses have been available in Pakistan.

Crucial speech
The archives of state-owned broadcaster, Radio Pakistan, also
contain cranky old audio recordings of most of those speeches, except
for one: his address to the Constituent Assembly in the port city of
Karachi on 11 August 1947, three days before the creation of Pakistan.

For liberals in Pakistan, it was a crucial speech in which Mr
Jinnah spoke in the clearest possible terms of his dream that the
country he was creating would be tolerant, inclusive and secular.

"You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are
free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this
state of Pakistan," Jinnah declared. "You may belong to any religion or
caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the state."

Documented evidence suggest that Mr Jinnah's words didn't go
down well with the powerful and ambitious religious ideologues around
him at the time, who then made sure the speech was virtually blacked out
in the next day's newspapers.

Successive military governments in Pakistan were accused of
attempting to downplay, even remove, the speech from official records.

Why did that speech unsettle some Pakistani leaders so much?
Many believe it was because it was seen at odds with the kind of
anti-India, anti-Hindu, Islamic state they were trying to create and
preserve their own power bases.

By the time Pakistan embarked on a process of Islamisation
and introduced tough new laws aimed at religious minorities in the 1970s
and 1980s, the more controversial bits of that speech were largely
wiped out from public discourse.

Jinnah was repackaged as an Islamic leader, rather than a westernised secular man he had been for much of his life.

'Destroyed deliberately'

Along the way, whatever audio recording there might once have been of that crucial speech disappeared.

Mr Jinnah's ideals for Pakistan were further muddled, as the
country's hardliners began to question whether the founding father had
indeed said those words in his address, was he in the right frame of
mind or what he might have meant by them.

"It's a case of criminal, wilful destruction of our history,"
alleges Murtaza Solangi, the former director general of Radio Pakistan.

He cannot say with certainty whether Pakistan ever possessed the audio recording of the 11 August speech.

But based on his persistent inquiries over the last few
years, he's come to the conclusion that "if Pakistan ever had a copy of
the speech on tape, it was probably destroyed deliberately".

In his quest to trace the audio, Solangi contacted the BBC in
London. He was told the BBC archive didn't have the 'Jinnah tapes'. He
then contacted All India Radio (AIR) in Delhi. Indian officials told him
they have the speech.

But it took the Indian authorities another two years before
they were forced to release the tapes in public domain -mainly in
response to a request by an Indian Muslim activist under the country's
Right to Information law.

'Missing' tape

So, when the news came last week that All
India Radio had handed over original recordings of two of Mr Jinnah's
1947 speeches to Radio Pakistan, it was seen as a breakthrough of sorts.

But Mr Solangi's excitement was somewhat dampened when it
turned out that the crucial missing speech wasn't part of it. The
recordings handed over last week are already a part of Radio Pakistan
archives," he points out.

"The only difference is we now have them in much better, original quality."

The first of the two speeches handed over is believed to be
Mr Jinnah's last address on radio within the borders of present day
India. It was recorded on 3 June 1947, in Delhi.

The second tape consists of Mr Jinnah's well-known address to
the Constituent Assembly in Karachi on the day the country came into
existence: 14 August 1947.

It was recorded by sound engineers from All India Radio. They
were invited to come to Karachi from Delhi because the country about to
be born did not have radio stations equipped for such recordings.
AIR engineers are believed to have recorded both of Jinnah's speeches in Karachi: August 11th and 14th.

"They [AIR officials] initially told me they have the missing
August 11th tape, but of late have become evasive about it," says
Solangi.

"They have told others they don't have it. At the moment, we just don't know whether they have it or not."

Historic importance

Some in Pakistan suspect it may have to do with the dominant Indian
narrative which paints Jinnah as the man responsible for large-scale
Hindu-Muslim violence in the run up to the partition and the man who
divided India.

But it's not entirely clear why, if the speech indeed exists,
the authorities in India would hand over two of the Jinnah tapes, but
not the 11 August speech.

"I doubt it's deliberate," says Raza Rumi, director of Jinnah
Institute, an Islamabad-based think tank. "Given the red-tape in the
Indian bureaucracy, I wouldn't be surprised if Pakistan's request for
Jinnah tapes is simply stuck or lost in the system."

The recording of Jinnah's 11 August speech may be of great importance to students of history on both sides of the border.

But if ever found, could it really help Pakistan's seemingly
marginalized liberals to win an argument with the hardliners and the
religious right in reshaping the country's now deeply entrenched Islamic
identity?

"It's not about trying to convince the religious zealots that Jinnah wanted a different kind of Pakistan," says Solangi.

"It's about correcting our distorted history and letting the people decide what kind of Pakistan they want."

Jinnah knew it too well that creation of Pakistan is one thing but to provide stability to a new born country he had to follow a liberal , secular and modern path-and he was right as following Zia's model there is a murderous play of fanaticism in most of the places in Pakistan- killing and being killed is the order of the day.

Jinnah's Pakistan is not here. If anything we r living in a dystopian society. Adeerus Ghayan's books accurately describe the filth we have been forced to live with. If we r lucky the Azadi March might provide a relief from it and if we are unlucky then we have seen the other form of un-Azadi in Afghanistan and Iraq/Syria

Respected Sir. From where in the following lines of the Quaid, gives you the idea that he wanted a 'Secular' Pakistan? Surely a Islamic government doesn't stop Hindus for praying in Temples or Christians from going to their churches. In fact it protects their rights to do so. All religions are free to practice their own way of life. It has nothing to do with affairs of an Islamic state. Please mention any other excerpt from any other speech or interview, where Jinnah Sahab said that he wanted a secular Pakistan.

"You are free. You are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan," Jinnah declared. "You may belong to any religion or caste or creed - that has nothing to do with the business of the state."